A Note About FrontBurner Traffic

In the comments to Leading Off this morning, a FrontBurnervian named M Schwartz said that there has been a “significant drop in traffic on FrontBurner” because of the way we moderate comments. FBvians who have been around a while know all about the Time of Darkness a few years back, when Wick shut off comments altogether because they weren’t much fun to read. Traffic did drop then. But the decision to moderate comments — and to do it with a fairly heavy hand, tossing remarks not only because they are vulgar but because, for instance, they don’t use upper-case letters to begin sentences — has proven to be a solid decision.

From August to October last year, FrontBurner averaged about 56,000 unique visitors per month. For the same period this year, we have averaged about 114,000 unique visitors. Now then, owing to the way Google Analytics does its job (and the way we do ours), the number from last year doesn’t account for visits made on a mobile device, which the 2011 number does. A tech genius here (Hi, Randy!) says adding 10,000 unique visitors to last year’s average would be a crazy high number. Let’s do it anyway.

Conservative estimate: traffic is up 70 percent over last year. Lesson to be learned: don’t confuse the number of comments to a post with the number of people who are reading it.

Tim, the comment you commented on brings up a quandary all bloggers face: If someone posts a comment stating as a fact something that’s completely untrue, do you (a) delete it, (b) respond to it, providing a victory of sorts for the troll or (c) ignore it and hope your other readers will be smart enough to recognize idiocy when they see it?

I call BS on your increased traffic claims, Tim. I sure hope you’re not using this data to sell ads.

First, Google Analytics, while fine for internally tracking pageviews, clickstreams and what not, has too many technical limitations to accurately track users. The proliferation of ‘bots and automated searches is known inflator of traffic and D Magazine does even not filter ‘bots at the Web server level.

When you’re serious about accurately tracking and reporting users you’ll either announce audited and verified numbers, and /or you will require readers – not just commentators – to log-in.

Until then, the comments are a good indicator of your traffic patterns. They are down, buddy. Way down. Thanks for playing.

I don’t care what your B.S. Google Analytics say, I don’t read it as much as I used to. Therefore traffic has to be down. (By the way, Tim, didn’t you use the word “Analytics” in the title of a book you wrote that never sold? Proof your stats are bogus.)

@Lakewood ex-pat: I don’t sell ads. If you have issues with the way Google Analytics measures traffic, that’s fine. I’m just here to tell you that we used the same tool a year ago that we use now. And that tool indicates that traffic is up 70 percent.

I can also tell you that no one else in town is going to post their Google Analytics numbers, as I have here.

@Tim – The issue seems to be how your company uses flawed data to sell ads and make money from customers, not Google Analytics. Maybe the reason that no one posts their G.A. data is that they know they should not be using it to tell a story that is not true.